Slow going for early voting in TN House District 95 primary

The first week of early voting in the primary election to fill the Tennessee House District 95 seat vacated earlier this year by Mark Lovell wasn't expected to be booming, but numbers are lagging far behind expectations, according to officials with Shelby County Election Commission.

"Traditionally, special elections are not barn burners. So far, we’ve had 904 people vote early and that’s through Saturday," Linda Phillips, the county's administrator of elections, said.

That's in a district with 51,413 registered voters, Phillips said. Election day for the primaries is April 27.

"Now, it is a primary, but I just would have expected more voters," she said.

The election commission had planned for a 20 percent turnout of registered voters in the district.

"But if we continue at the current pace we’ll be lucky to hit 10 percent," Phillips said as the final week of early voting begins.

Phillips has budgeted $320,000 for the special election and the county will be reimbursed by the state.

Early voting ends on Saturday. Early voting for the general election on June 15 runs May 26 through June 10.

The eight candidates in the primary are Democart Julie Byrd Ashworth and Republicans Joseph Crone, Gail Horner, Curtis Loynachan, Missy Marshall, Bill Patton, Frank Uhlhorn and Kevin Vaughan. Independents Robert Schutt and Jim Tomasik, a Libertarian, will be on the general election ballot.

So far, of the 904 ballots pulled, 86 were Democratic and 818 were Republican, Phillips said.

And in this heavily Republican segment of the county, the primary race will likely decide the election, said Gerald Green, a political science professor at LeMoyne-Owen College.

Unless the numbers improve this week and on election day, a smattering of voters will decide the election, Green said.

"We’re really letting a very small part of the electorate send people to the House," he said.

The early voting locations are the Collierville Church of Christ, 575 Shelton Road in Collierville, and New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, 7786 Poplar Pike in Germantown.

Hit with accusations of inappropriately touching a woman and violating the legislature's sexual harassment policy, Lovell, a freshman Republican lawmaker, resigned his seat after only few weeks into his first session in Nashville.

He has claimed the accusations against him were false and said he resigned to devote more time to his family and business.

The Shelby County Commission opted not to appoint a replacement for Lovell out of concern that the board, with a majority of Democrats, would not choose a Republican.